Trade of the year?

Tuesday, 1 June 2010

One of the smaller sponsors of Garmin-Transitions is a small hedge fund, Holowesko Partners. Run by cycling enthusiast Mark Holowesko, the business also backs the youth/feeder team for Garmin-Transitions.

Kerr-ching: Vaughters hit the jackpot

If Holowesko are stuck for investment ideas, they’d do well to get Jonathan Vaughters on board. For he might well have sold Bradley Wiggins to Sky at the top of the market.

Following his impressive fourth place last July, Wiggins became a high-profile recruitment target for Team Sky. But the Brit was under contract to Garmin for another year and Vaughters said “no”, only to hold out for negotiations. Sky then bought Wiggo out of his contract for a phenomenal sum, generating a substantial cash windfall for the Slipstream Sports team.

Has Wiggins brought value to Sky? We can’t say until the Tour de France but with the mountainous route, the lack of a team time trial and shorter time trials, I can’t see Wiggins improving on fourth place. Wiggins stormed the Giro prologue but that was it for Italy. But whilst we wait and speculate about July, the cash is sitting in Vaughter’s bank account.

Plus the absence of the Briton allows Garmin to bring an extra rider in support of Farrar, to boost the chances of stage wins, something that’s valuable in the Giro although you get the sense that Farrar will still lose out to Cavendish, extra man or not.

All told, selling Wiggins at the top of the market could prove to be the trade of the year for Vaughters: he swapped the uncertainty of Wiggins repeating his performance for a sackload of certain cash.

I like Wiggins, he is a character, the "cocky sod" aspect can be positive too. Although he seems a bit more serious these days, but that's only going via the media and twitter. Hope he's enjoying things.